Wouldn’t it be great if we could Edit > Undo everything? Like we fail a test — Edit > Undo. We eat an entire thing of cake — Edit > Undo. We stop going to the gym for a year — Edit > Undo. We drop a monitor out of a 15 floor window — Edit > Undo. You get the picture. We could almost start things off with on a clean slate. No evidence of our stupidity and no awkward moments. It would be glorious.

Unfortunately life doesn’t give us that luxury (at least not yet — yay for time travel). We have to face the consequences of our actions and kind of have to hope for the best. At best we can learn from our mistakes and make sure it doesn’t happen again. One of life’s great gifts: [expensive] life lessons.

If you haven’t already guessed it this is my “New Year’s” post — most people need a specific time to get there shit together and they usually pick the end of a year and the beginning of a new one to do it. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t fall into that cliche. Every year I think this is the year that it all changes and I’m gonna be fit as a fiddle and save every dime and buy a million dollar house. But reality slowly sets in and other more important things come up and before you know it you’re at the end of the year making the same resolutions.

So although I do fall into the cliche, I’m not an idiot. I don’t expect this year to actually be the year everything suddenly makes sense. All I can hope for is the best and hope everything kinda-sorta falls into place.

I’ve been dreading this post. Because after I post it I’m almost obligated to start making things better for myself (it’s been a rough start). You probably already know this about me but I’d rather eat an entire tub of ice cream than to confront my problems. Unfortunately I’ve run out of ice cream.

So good luck to everyone (including myself) — here’s to a New Year and a clean slate!

PS. Every year me and a buddy of mine make a statement for the new year — almost like a resolution but more of a guideline/words to live by for the next year. This year it’s to make bold moves and decisions. Forget being safe and becoming stale in the same spot you’ve always been. Just go out and do things you wouldn’t dream of ever doing. Because sometimes we have to push ourselves off a cliff before we can really fly.

Now a days when you hear the word BlackBerry a negative image comes to mind. From negative blogs to negative stock market news -- but one thing that is common amongst all those sources: they are inaccurate. If you just read the titles and skim through each article the impression you get is how are they still around. But if you dig further into the articles and actual do some fact checking you realize those articles are just sensualism. People are more willing to read the bad article than the handful of good ones. Society has been built in a way where we like to see companies fall and burn instead of them prospering. It's just human nature.

But the truth is BlackBerry is here to stay and they are still profitable. Companies that are not profitable wither away and do not stick around year to year just because they can. BlackBerry has beaten the odds time and time again and are still selling devices and software. It's what they do best. They thrive under pressure and time and time again again they survive.

Not too long ago Apple was in the same boat. They were suffering from bad sales and were not able to innovate and as a result losing market share. The only difference is back in the 90's there were no blogs and no social media to call them out on it. Apple was a brand that did not matter and was not worth a second of someone's time to review and bash. BlackBerry on the other hand is having some problems during this day in age where people are able to hop on a computer and post a bad review or comment. In regards to Apple, they were able to bounce back with the help of Steve Jobs after some time. I hold the same belief for BlackBerry. They will bounce back and all the sheep out there that think otherwise will eat their words. But they won't show it. They will just ignore the fact that BlackBerry is back and move onto bashing some other company or brand to drive more users to their site.

Recently it has become the cool thing to bash on BlackBerry and it had caught on to bigger companies like T-Mobile. I respected T-Mobile for a long time for their Uncarrier campaign -- but as soon as they jumped on the bandwagon and started turning their backs on BlackBerry just to earn some brownie points with the public I've lost all respect. It's a shame that that is what it takes for companies to survive now. It's another example of the philosophy of a bully. Bullies pick on the smaller guys to make themselves more popular. T-Mobile decided that to become popular they too have to bully struggling companies. T-Mobile's attack on BlackBerry was nothing more than a blatant attempt at bullying. If your service need more users, don't resort to bullying. It's a damn shame.

I'm a proud BlackBerry user and will always be a BlackBerry user. Their innovation has been slow but they have stayed true to their colors. I know what to expect of them. I respect their attempts of coming back and I have 110% faith in the brand. John Chen is the new face of BlackBerry and he looks bold enough to get them out of the dark age.

I've been with BlackBerry since their Curve 8320. Every time they came out with a device it was a solid venture. I am currently using BlackBerry 10 device and love every minute of it. Sure it had and still has its share shortcomings but they are working aggressively to fix all of their problems. They aren't just giving up and going home. They are fighting bad press everyday and sticking to their guns. That is a company I can believe in and trust.

I am BlackBerry.

Anyways, during this whole migration, I also migrated servers. Initially I had just set up a laptop at home as a temporary server. It was running on Debian Squeeze on an old Dell Inspiron 600m. It was going well and didn't run into any big problems. The only issue I had with it was reliability with my internet connection. I have Verizon Fios at home, which is super fast btw, but Verizon has a tendency of going down time to time. The down times are unexpected and because the net shuts itself down, it resets my IP address at home. Then it screws with my DNS I have set up and I have to do some maintenance to get it back up and running.

It's a minor annoyance but if it happens enough times, it becomes a big annoyance. I've been toying around with the idea of using a host called Digital Ocean. Initially what got my attention was their feature of giving you basically a VPS environment. You would be building your server from scratch (software-wise). They do these things in droplets which is like an instance of a server. They even give you a dedicated IP and DNS set up -- which is fantastic.

I gave it a try and was beyond wow'ed by the service. It did exactly what they said and it was super cheap. It was so easy it took me only a couple of days to bring everything from my at-home Debian server and put it all on this new Ubuntu instance. Most of everything was scripted well and I was able to bring it over without a hassle. I just had issues with internal web server configuration. Here is a checklist of the things I needed to do initially.

1. Create a new Ubuntu Droplet
2. Secure the server with new users and credentials
3. Install Nginx (Better version of Apache IMO)
4. Install MySQL (so 90's right?)
5. Install PHP5-FPM (a version of PHP)
6. Install NodeJS
7. Install Ghost Blog
8. Configure Nginx to play nice with Ghost Blog
9. Copy over old database for GhostDB
10. Migrate URL Shortener data (custom bit.ly-alternative)
11. Migrate URL Shortener logic
12. Migrate cloud settings (custom CloudApp-like file hosting feature)

After doing all that, something seemed like it was missing. Oh yeah -- email. Until now I've always used third party services when it came to emails -- either something like Gmail or whatever service I bought my domain from. Now the problem I had this time around was that I was handling the DNS via Digital Ocean and they did not provided an email service out of the box -- I had to make my own via the droplet.

After scouring the internet I found the following tools:

• Postfix
• Dovecot

Using the combination of the two I managed to set up my own email server and was able to send and receive secure emails. This was beyond fantastic -- I've never done it before and it actually worked out in the end. I even have email forwarding setup! (Nerdgasm)

After doing all that I basically have the same set-up as before but with more reliability and less hassle -- and it's only costing me at most $5/month.

There's so much more to explore and so much more features I can custom build and use -- I'm super excited.

The great thing about developing software is the instant gratification. With most other things you have to wait for results -- when it comes to web development you get back results almost instantly, which is fantastic.

It took a few days with all that's been going on in my life -- but I managed to make a very crude working example that well -- works. I had a lot of help from Apple's Automator. This is a fantastic tool that is available on all Macs as far as I know. Through automator you can basically script certain actions in the OS so you don't have to do it manually every time. It takes some work, but it's a super powerful tool.

In my case, I wanted to upload a file from my computer and share it instantly via a custom shortened url. I completed this application in tiny, manageable pieces.

1. Initially, I created an automator script that SCPs a file to my server once I drag it to a specific folder. Already the limitations had occurred to me. First, it's one folder. So that means every time I want to upload a file, I have to go to the folder and drag and drop my file. Also, what do I do when the file is there? It is physically removed from it's old location. Sure, I could copy it over and delete, but that requires extra steps.

   Folder Action

   Service

2. Then I got another idea of adding a Service to the OS instead. This means, instead of a folder action, this would be an actual service you run on the MacOS. What does that mean? Instead of having to drag and drop a file, I could just right-click on the file and hit "Send to RabIO" and the process would start from there.

   

3. Through automator I set up the blueprint of what I wanted to happen. In the blueprint, I utilize a shell script that calls my external server and does the following: generate a file key; generate a custom short URL; upload file and produce confirmation.

   

4. I'm able to right-click > Send to RabIO and wait for a popup message to confirm that the file has been uploaded and a short link has been copied into my clipboard.

   Short URL

   Long URL

Next steps

Right now the script runs and works as expected. Although I applied some initial security precautions to the application, I plan on locking it down further. I haven't written up a spec yet for the application, so I'll make it a little more organized down the road. The concept works and the nerd inside of me is pretty satisfied. Now onto the next thing!

You can market yourself through different channels and drive in traffic or you can get a little creative. My first attempt at exposure if by having custom url shorteners. Yeah I know there are like a million of them, but me being who I am, I don't like using someone else's service -- I like having my own. Call it vanity or whatever, I like earning what I have even if it takes a lot of blood and sweat to achieve it.

There are ton of url shorteners like bit.ly out there -- bit.ly actually paved the way for services like this. Now in my case I wanted something like rab.io/j40dD or even a step further rab.io/facebook to go to something like Facebook (just an example).

I went ahead and looked around to see what other people were doing and sure enough people were super creative. There are even new services like CloudApp that go a step further and host files with URL shorteners. This is pretty fantastic stuff. Imagine you needed to link someone to something -- wouldn't you rather link them to something like yourdoma.in/UEDO instead of bit.ly/UEDO or even a direct link like http://mrcoles.com/bookmarklet/ (great site btw, we'll get back to that later)?

That way when the world sees your link, they see your domain instead of something like bit.ly (no offense bit.ly). So I went on a research trip to make it possible. I decided to do everything via PHP since it's basically my second language next to Coldfusion nowadays -- if I could do it through javascript I would heh. But alas PHP was best fit for it.

My first road block was that I actually use this domain for more than redirects -- I host my blog and stuff. So I had to either go for a subdomain or just a sub-directory off of rab.io. So I did just that.

An example of a working redirect:

rab.io/s/bkmrk

So anytime someone goes to rab.io/s/[insert string] it will go to a page (if it exists).

So How Did I Make This Work?

I did a few things (probably out of order). First, I could have gone the route of setting up a form and submitting it with a new link and have it generate a short link for me. That's great, but I wanted to go a step further and just click on a button while on some random website and have it generate me a short link. Enter bookmarklets.

Bookmarklets are exactly what they sound like. Basically they are button(s) that exist in your Bookmark toolbar and if you click on them, they just don't take you to a page, they can perform javascript executions on the current page you are on -- in my case I wanted to take the current page's link and send it over to rab.io and generate a short link all in one shot. Confused yet? I'll explain.

Say if I was on this site: http://mrcoles.com/bookmarklet/

And I wanted to quickly generate a link like rab.io/s/bkmrk, I would just click on the Rab.io Shortener button in the bookmark toolbar, and it would bring me to my site and show me the short link like so:

There I have the option to either keep the link the way it is, or further customize it to something like rab.io/s/bkmrk.

So how did I make this happen. First go to this website: Bookmarklet Creator with Script Includer. After doing so, you'll find a bookmarklet generator that you can make some javascript magic with. In my case, this is the script I generated:

var _form = document.createElement("form");  
_form. setAttribute("target", "_blank");  
_form. setAttribute("action", "https://rab.io/path/to/shortener");  
_form. setAttribute("method", "POST");  
var _input = document.createElement("input");  
_input.setAttribute("name", "url_variable");  
_input.setAttribute("type", "hidden");  
_input.setAttribute("value", location.href);  
_form.appendChild(_input);  
_form.submit();  

MrColes.com then kindly generates this for me:

javascript:(function()%7Bvar%20_form%20%3D%20document.createElement(%22form%22)%3B_form.%20setAttribute(%22target%22%2C%20%22_blank%22)%3B_form.%20setAttribute(%22action%22%2C%20%22https%3A%2F%2Frab.io%2Fpath%2Fto%2Fshortener%22)%3B_form.%20setAttribute(%22method%22%2C%20%22POST%22)%3Bvar%20_input%20%3D%20document.createElement(%22input%22)%3B_input.setAttribute(%22name%22%2C%20%22url_variable%22)%3B_input.setAttribute(%22type%22%2C%20%22hidden%22)%3B_input.setAttribute(%22value%22%2C%20location.href)%3B_form.appendChild(_input)%3B_form.submit()%7D)()  

You select all that and drag it to your bookmark toolbar.

So a few things are going on here.

1. I was initially going to just do a GET call and use a query string, but it got messy with some URLS having encoded/decoded variables. So I decided to go with a POST method call because those input variables are easier to manage.

2. I'm creating a pseudo FORM on the current page and then creating the required form variable url_variable that will store the location.href (location of the current page I'm on)

3. Finally I submit the pseudo form to a new page/tab that will bring me to the URL shortener PHP page I have set up to create the new (or old variable if it was previously generated) and display it on the screen.

Now, there is a library called YOURLS that does URL shortening using PHP, but I went with creating one from scratch (yes I'm stubborn).

This is what the PHP page looks like:

<?php 

    if (!isset($_POST['url_variable']) || $_POST['url_variable'] == "") {

        header("location: https://rab.io/");

    } else {

        $url_variable = (strpos($_POST['url_variable'], "http") === false) ? 'http://' . $_POST['url_variable'] : $_POST['url_variable'];
    }

?>

<?php

    $dbh = new PDO("mysql:host=DB_HOST;dbname=DB_NAME", "DB_USER", "DB_PASS");

    $stmt = $dbh->prepare("CALL P_INSERT_URL(:URL_LOCATION_IN, @URL_ID_OUT, @URL_NAME_OUT)");

    // bind the variables to the statement
    $stmt->bindParam(':URL_LOCATION_IN', $url_variable, PDO::PARAM_STR);

    // call the stored procedure
    $stmt->execute();

    $output_base_url = '/s/' . $dbh->query('SELECT @URL_NAME_OUT')->fetchColumn();
    $output_url = 'rab.io' . $output_base_url;

    $url_id = $dbh->query('SELECT @URL_ID_OUT')->fetchColumn();
?>

Basically I look for the url_variable and then send it into the stored procedure in my database. In the stored procedure, I just insert a new record if no current record exists. If an old record exists, I simply bring back that old record.

Final Thoughts

So at this point, I (even you) can convert any website into a short link of your liking and personalize it. It was a pretty great experience to having create one within a day's worth of time.

Next Steps

I want to take this even further and be able to upload files and create short links to them via this website kind of like how CloudApp does it. Their service is great, but you have to pay for the good stuff -- so I'd rather just build one on my own :].

If you need any help with this, shoot me an email or even comment below. Thanks for reading!

DISCLAIMER: My code used is very primitive and probably needs a lot of work to meet best practices guidelines. But this was just a quick and dirty way of going about it. I'll make improvements as time goes on.

What do I mean by standards? Well for one thing, REST calls are usually done by calling pages like this:

https://example.org/API/1.0/users (get user list)

In my case, I was making calls like:

https://example.org/API/1.0/users.cfc?method=getUsers (get user list)

So although not completely within the guidelines, the output is in REST standard format (JSON). The main reason for deviating from clean endpoints is because the environment I had to work with. At work we are still working with Coldfusion 8. So clean URLs can be done but take a lot of work and REST isn't supported outright by Coldfusion until version 10. Most businesses have a hard time with upgrading to the latest and greatest version because of costs (Adobe Coldfusion license are SUPER expensive) and possibility of system failure with incompatibility. So it's a huge step to take and I get that -- but it makes it difficult for developers to do their job efficiently. But alas, being a developer we must adjust, and most of us do so quietly.

With this new client, we are using PHP/MySQL as a backend and it opens up a lot of doors that aren't usually opened. The great thing about PHP is that it is free and is updated quite frequently to support the newest tech. So this project was going to be a little more fun.

Up until now I have primarily focused on the design of the web app. The clients have been super happy with the direction I'm taking. Now that the designs are approved, we are going to get into the actual coding of the application. My choice of a backend solution this time is going to be Laravel. I've used a few frameworks in PHP in the past, but nothing like this. Laravel is supposed to be a lot cleaner and lighter. So far from the testing I'm kind of liking it. Setting it up on my public testing domain was easy with a few tweaks to make it work and secure the installation. Installing it on my local testing box took a little bit of time because what I found out to be permission issues. Note to self: follow all directions thoroughly -- even if the instructions are merely suggestions vs actual required steps.

Since I'm just using the RESTful parts of Laravel, it'll be interesting to see what happens when I merge the REST framework with MarionetteJS's MVC approach. The nerd inside of me is super excited.

MVC frameworks are great for when you have an application that will eventually grow to be a full featured application. It make adding modules and functionality super easy and organized. If you make a change to one area theoretically it won't break other areas. It keeps things nice and separated -- mostly your data and your actual views.

Traditionally the concept of MVC is applied mostly to backend development but recently it has been moving more over to the front-end. What does that mean? Before you would simply use backend solutions like PHP or Ruby to create an MVC type application and you would have the following setup:

• Model: Database
• View: HTML/Javascript/CSS
• Controller: Action pages on the server

Nowadays things have slightly been changing. Instead of having the MVC framework exist only on the server, the whole concept is being shifted into Javascript. Frameworks like AngularJS, BackboneJS, etc. have been coming up like wild fire. I've used a little bit of everything to get my feet wet and I gotta say they are super impressive.

I've mostly stuck with BackboneJS only because it is the barest of them all. It comes with very little assistance and most of what you need extra you have to code it in yourself. I don't like it when I make an application and am told how to format my code or how to use it in order for it to fit the framework. BackboneJS let's you do what you want -- for the most part.

So far what I've done is use MarionetteJS (fills in the gaps that BackBoneJS has) and built MVC format applications:

• Model: Async calls to the server/database (RESTful)
• View: Underscore / Handlebars Templates
• Controller: Javascript functions within the application

I've learned through the years, that backend programming languages will change and vary greatly between clients. You can have one client use strictly ASP.net another one use Coldfusion or in extreme cases (god forbid) Java. In any case you don't want to have to re-learn MVC or any kind of framework in a completely different language for just one project. Yeah sure the experience would be awesome -- but sometimes you just don't have the time. Idealistically, if you can just figure out how to get the data off the server using the available backend language, you can just use the Javascript MVC you are so used to and produce the application without fiddling around too much with the actual server.

As great as moving out has been, I still value my family. Every weekend I try to go back up north to see my mom and the family. Call me a momma's boy or whatever, but I do love my mom and it brings a smile to her face whenever I make it up there. It really feels like I never left college. During my college years, I used to always come back home on the weekends (and get my laundry done).

It's refreshing really. Being alone for the entire week is nice be can be overwhelming at the same time. Having a family to go back home to is pretty sweet and I wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world.

Most of the times I can barely pull myself away from my work -- be it a project for work or just a personal one -- I get so sucked in I forget what day of the week it is. When I come back home to my mom and my cousins, I am forced to talk and have fun with them. Pulls me away from whatever work-related stuff I have to do. Best part is when I do get back to work -- my mind is like super energized and I think of things I hadn't thought of before. That's something I learned over the years too -- whenever you're working on something and just can't figure it out: walk away. Like literally walk away from the problem and come back to it. Sometimes you're so deep into it you can't see the obvious things around you. It always works.

Right now I'm writing this and doing some development work in the family room while my mom is watching her Indian soap operas.

Oh and there's always free food at home -- so that's always great.

So starting Monday I'm gonna be living on that new lifestyle called P90X3. What does that mean? Well for one thing no fun. Just kidding. Well I can't be enjoying myself like I used to with foods like:

• Candy
• Huge sandwiches (from Subway and Renato's)
• Ice cream
• Milk & cookies
• Gummy Worms
• Gummy Bears
• Burgers
• Milkshakes
• Pizza

That is just a basic list. I'm sure there are others I've forgotten but those are my usual suspects. I live a life of anxiety and my anxiety drug of choice is food. I abuse the crap out of it. See I'm what you call a snacker. I always need to be fixated on something like food to be able to accomplish my real life tasks. It sucks but that's just how it is -- now that I'll be on the program I'm going to have to re-learn how to do things.

It won't be a complete cold turkey though. I'll still have coffee /drool. Also I can snack right? I'm a fan of apples and bananas -- so I can do some substitutions here and there.

The summer is right around the corner ladies & gents -- I don't wanna be caught being that guy who sweats all the time.

Anyways so today is literally the last work day until Monday and the next three months of my life. So today I'm gonna order the Renato's Special (that things is a godsend -- if you haven't tried it, try it) and savor the crap out of it. I don't know when the next time I have it is gonna be, so I will live every moment & bite of it like it was the last.

I love food. I sometimes have days where I start to hate it because of what it does to me -- but at the end of the day I always go back to it. It's like I'm in an abusive relationship -- damn.

Quote of the moment by George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman:

“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”

Amen brotha.

As fate would have it, the other day I got a phone call from a friend (Alex). What started out as a normal conversation took a turn for the worst. He brought up this old program I did back in college called P90X -- it was a good time in my life. Was fit and healthy and my body was agile as ever. The problem was the amount of time it took daily to keep up with the program. Eventually nearing the last few weeks I got distracted with stuff like going out and eating like a pig.

Our conversation went on and he asked me if I could join him to do the new version of P90X called P90x3. At first I was like Oh god and then was I was super hesitant about it. But I have this thing where I can't let people down. And hey doing this is probably the best thing I can do for myself. So I agreed but told him I would look into it and let him know in a few days if I'm actually going to put myself through it all again.

So the next day I started looking up some reviews and stories from people who have done the new program. As I looked around, I found out that this is a super new program that was just released in December. Oh yeah forgot to mention, this program is lead by the coolest guy in the world Tony Horton. This guy is beyond energetic and full of life. Say what you want about him, but he is probably the coolest guy I know (virtually). Anyways, since the program was fairly new, the reviews and stories were pretty limited -- hell because it's a three month program, people are still in the first phase of it.

So from what I could find about it and the differences between this version vs the first version I tried a few years back is:

1. This one is much quicker than the first -- like literally 30 mins vs the original 60+ minutes. Now yes, this doesn't include the warm up and cool down, but still the amount of time is much less than the original.

2. According to the testimonials, this one is much better and efficient in weight loss and acheiving personal goals. Now this remains to be seen only because everyone's body is different. So I'll see how it goes as time goes on.

3. The Yoga portion of it is significantly shorter. When I say significantly, I mean much less than the 90 minutes the original one was. Yoga is amazing for the body and helped me out a lot, but doing it for 90 minutes straight was just so overwhelming.

Everything else is relatively the same from what I've seen -- but again I won't know till I try it.

I decided to go with it and do it as a team effort with Alex -- Call it peer-pressure or even me needing a reason to do something good for myself -- either way I probably needed the push. So far I'm just reading through the material and trying to plan out the next three months. Obviously it won't go completely according to plan -- but it's nice to have some sort of blue print.

I'll keep updating this blog with results and what not -- should be an interesting three months coming up. Oh and the first one to back out of this program within the three months buys liquor for the rest of the year. It's always nice to have an incentive for not quitting (or quitting first =]).

Quote of the night from Mark Twain:

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.”

I failed miserably when going to the gym this morning. Was at my parents house for the weekend and the one hour commute is a huge turn off when waking up. Needless to say I couldn't motivate myself to get up and go early to the gym. But I'm back in my apartment tonight so I shouldn't have any excuses this time -- and the temperature is going to be pretty nice so definitely no excuses.

I did pretty well with eating clean today (snuck in two somoas [girl scout cookies] though during work) -- also had some green juice after a long time. I love juicing but it's so time consuming. I have an auger so it's not as fast as other models but it's more efficient and less heat is applied to the juice. On average it takes me about a half hour to make the juice and clean up. A little less than a year ago I went on a green juice diet and had it for thirty days straight -- I got so sick of it but I was in the best shape I had been in a long time. Fell off the wagon after that and hopefully I'll be able to get back on in the next few months.

Speaking of change -- I'm working on a big change in the next few months but am going to keep it close to the chest. So far everyone who I've discussed this with have all agreed it's not the best of ideas -- but sometimes the best ideas are the ones that no one agrees with initially and it turns out for the best. We have to take risks every once in a while to reap the rewards -- otherwise life would be so linear, utterly predictable and boring. But as of right now still mowing over the details and mums the word.

At that point I had everything and spent a long time making practice marks and shadings -- it was a pertty cool experience. Eventually I'll bring it all over to Illustrator but for now I'm going to keep conditioning myself. Something I saw during my weekend was a Dot Grid Book. Basically instead of solid lines like a graph has, they have dots aligned so you can draw straigh lines and align things properly without having unecessary clutter like other lines.

There are two flavors that I've seen are popular: Dot Grid Book and Behance Dot Grid Book.

I'm leaning more towards the Behance Dot Grid Book. The only downside is they are both pricey compared to my Graph Notebook I picked up for 3 bucks. So for now I think I'll stick to the graph pages until I get good enough and can make the Dot Grid books profitable in some way. Money drives us (and pays for my lunches).

So far the experience is pretty sweet -- I feel drawing and laying out your ideas is a great way to make room and form new ideas. It's a great way to unlock new potential.

Most websites come in two flavors: secured or unsecured. So what does that mean? Have you ever been to a site and in the address bar you see something like this:

Unsecured Example

And on the other hand you see sites like this:

Secured

The second one makes you feel a little better right? Well it should. I could go into this who encryption tutorial but just know going to just http:// will mean any data you submit to a site is unsecured and unencrypted and can be read by anyone because it's all plain text. But if you got a site with https:// (assuming they have a valid site certificate) that means all the data you submit or are accessing is encrypted and safe (for the most part ;-]).

Usually e-commerce sites that have shopping carts or use a credit in any way use the https:// protocol to keep your data safe and give the end-user a peace of mind.

Set up your Ghost Blog with SSL

When you buy a domain, sometimes they give you an SSL cert or you have to go out and buy one. Generating and setting up takes a little bit of time and there are resources available online showing you how to do it.

In my case everything I needed was a Google search away. I had to make a few modifications here and there to make it fit my needs. For instance, I use nginx as a webserver and have Ghost running on NodeJS elsewhere. So I use this thing called Proxy Pass in nginx to do the behind the scenes forwarding.

I had the option to either make my site completely SSL or just parts of it. The upside to having all of it set up using SSL is that the site is secured. But the downside is its always going to have some unecessary overhead if the content you are accessing doesn't have to be secured (like seeing an image or something).

I like having a complete package and all -- but I also like having options and not be limited to just one thing.

In my case I needed to set up just the admin panel of Ghost set to SSL. If you search around, you'll find if you set the forceAdminSSL to true it will redirect the Admin instance of Ghost to SSL always.

This works fantastic except one thing was left out of the documentation: If you have a server set up to do proxy_pass (nginx to NodeJS instance of Ghost through port 80) then you have to forward the X-Forward-Proto value to the proxy setup. If you don't, you are going to get an infinite redirect loop when visiting the admin panel of Ghost.

Add the following line to the proxy setup area of your nginx configuration file:

proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;  

Here's where you add it in the nginx configuration file:

        location ^~ /blog/ {
            proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
            proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
            proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;

            proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:2368;
            proxy_redirect off;    
        }  

This forwards the protocol used in the URL request. Otherwise although we are hitting the https version of site, we are still only hitting the http of the Ghost instance here:

proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:2368;  

After doing all that restart Ghost and nginx and you should be golden.

If you have any questions, drop me a comment and I'll see what I can do :)

The Ghost Blog Platform (the engine running this blog) runs on NodeJS and is relatively new -- so it makes us beg for more when it comes to integration with other services like Twitter, Google, FaceBook, etc.

But slowly I'm looking around and finding ways to implementing it manually myself. Tonight I managed to get two things added:

• Disqus comment system
• Google Analytics

So now you will be able to (if you're interesed ;-]) to comment on the blog posts using the commenting system and I'll be able to track some site statistics via Google.

For anyone running a Ghost Blog and is interested and implenting either Google Analytics or Disqus follow the following links for a thorough walk through:

Google Analystics: http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/ghost/adding-google-analytics-to-ghost

Note: I made a slight change from what the article tells you to do. I added my Google tracking code to right before the </body> tag in the default.hbs file. Had issues with the blog loading when I added the code before the </head> tag.

Disqus: http://blog.christophvoigt.com/enable-comments-on-ghost-with-disqus/

If you need any help with this, leave a comment below.